Crack a nut with a sledgehammer


Dario Fo

Crack a nut with a sledgehammer

Writing is a wonderful way of pouring your heart out when your voice and mind are too shocked to articulate anything with a little bit of order and objectivity. Today is one of those days. An extremely sad day for my beloved homeland. How has it come to this? How? That’s all I can think of while listening to the Spanish radio with tears in my eyes. Tears that taste of sadness but also of anger. Sadness because we do not deserve the selfishness and useless ways of our politicians, anger because the powerful tool that social media is charged with misinformation and deception from both sides. That’s why I wanted to write for you today. I am in no possession of any truth. My intention is not telling you what to think, I wouldn’t even dare, I just want to try to explain for my own sake what is going on.

Spain is a democracy. A full working democracy. Franco IS dead. He has been underground for a while. Please, stop bringing back his ghost to explain today’s madness. Spain DID elect its current PM, Mr Rajoy. As a socialist I have never voted for him or his right party but our government is not a fascist one. It is an insult to our democracy so hardly earned and fought for during our convulsive 20th century. Nevertheless, the injuries, the use of brutal police action by the government is not the way. Not against unarmed citizens, Mr Rajoy has taken an extreme route of violence. I know the government needs to make sure nobody is above the law but the use of police violence only throws more fuel on the fires and give the separatists more ammunition for their cause. All I ask is the media to stop judging us a fascist nation. What a short memory we all seem to have! Police forces always have used these methods all around the civilised world. When in Spain, I never heard anyone calling the Thatcher’s government a fascist one and you do not need to be reminded of her uses of the police.

The Catalan independence referendum is illegal. It is a challenge to our own Constitution the way it stands now. This referendum is an act of reckless irresponsibility from the Catalan Government. Mr Puigdemont and all his followers are acting in the name of a patria, a homeland they say they love but by going against the law they only making matters worse for its people and their final goal. It is a glory hunting, selfish and reckless decision to go ahead with the referendum knowing very clearly what the response from Madrid was going to be. The voting should have been cancelled. Today should have been the day that the Catalan nation took the streets marching peacefully demanding a legal referendum as loud as they could. Instead we have a mock vote where only the people already convinced about being independent are going to express themselves and there is blood on the streets. We all lose enormously today.  The wounds in our society have been opened wide again and there is only so much stitching we can keep on doing to mend it.

So, people are voting today with no control, identification or any democratic guarantees. Voting against the law. The saddest thing is, Mr Puigdemont will declare the independence whatever the result and he will do so in the name of freedom and democracy. He will do so because his personal disorientated idea of law. Delusion at the highest level. The Spanish government was right to not let the referendum happen but they are dealing with the crisis in this violent way they are shooting themselves in the foot. The Catalan government are making their independence route an explosive one by ignoring the very important fact that not everyone in Catalonia wants independence. They have fractured their own nation a little bit more today. I hope it is all worth it for them in the end.

This is not a Ken Loach film. This is my country being torn apart by two sets of politicians who haven’t been able, for many decades, to sit down and talk. In these global times we are in, when the world doesn’t seem so big anymore, it is sad to see all these movements creeping back in with the same motive to protect their homeland from the outside. La patria, your homeland, the flag, the land… how have we managed to become so single minded again? Maybe Nietzsche was right “Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, and ages, it is the rule.” Spain will wake up tomorrow with a government hopefully on the way out and the still Spanish region of Catalonia wondering what now? Pure madness.

One thought on “Crack a nut with a sledgehammer

  1. I hope that, in the event of a ‘Yes’ vote the Catalan government go ahead and declare independence. I worry that this might cause civil war but if the Spanish government are sensible they ought to respect the result. If not then the EU and world leaders should condemn all violence.

    Liked by 1 person

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